Lyft Sets IPO Terms At Up To $23B Valuation

Ride-hailing company Lyft is revving forward toward its IPO. As expected, the company announced this morning the launch of its roadshow for the initial public offering of its Class A common stock with an expected price of between $62 and $68 per share.

This means that its official IPO will likely take place in about two weeks.

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In a press release, Lyft revealed plans to offer 30,770,000 shares of its Class A common stock on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol “LYFT.”

Doing the math, on the low end of that range, the company will raise $1.9 billion at a valuation of $18.5 billion. On the high end, it will raise $2.1 billion at a valuation of $23 billion, confirming reports by the Wall Street Journal. In February, our EIC Alex Wilhelm analyzed just how much sense it made for Lyft to be valued at between $20 billion and $25 billion.

Lyft finally formally filed to go public on March 1. At the time, the document listed a placeholder $100 million figure for the offering. While the media and the ride-hailing industry have long expected both Uber and Lyft to go public – Lyft beating its larger, more globally-minded rival to the punch was notable. Lyft’s announcement was historic because it was the first U.S. ride-hailing company to go public.

Cumulatively, Lyft has raised approximately $4.91 billion in outside capital over the course of many equity funding rounds. The company’s most recent round, a $600 million Series I round, led by Fidelity Management & Research Co., valued the company at just over $15.1 billion, post-money.

If we want to get technical (and we do in this case), let’s take a look at the filing itself.

In addition to the Class A shares being offered to the public, the company will also have Class B shares. Those B shares “are identical, except for voting and conversion rights,” according to the ride-hailing company’s amended S-1. This confirms reports Crunchbase News covered back in February, which stated that co-founders Logan Green and John Zimmer sought a voting structure which granted them outsized control over the company. According to the filing, Lyft’s Class B shares have 20 times the voting leverage, granting Green approximately 29.31 percent and Zimmer approximately 19.45 percent of the voting power. The filing states that the co-founders “will be able to significantly influence any action requiring the approval of our stockholders.”

J.P. Morgan Securities LLC, Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC, Jefferies LLC, UBS Securities LLC, Stifel, Nicolaus & Company Inc., RBC Capital Markets, LLC and KeyBanc Capital Markets Inc. will act as book-running managers for the offering.

Illustration: Li-Anne Dias